Friday, July 22, 2016

Convention notes

Peter Thiel

I've just finished helping to cover the Republican convention in Cleveland for my newspaper (I live in metropolitan Cleveland). Most of my coverage is not particularly germane to this blog, but a couple of notes:

(2) I never heard back on my request to interview Peter Thiel. No doubt he'll feel terrible when he hears he missed his chance to be interviewed by RAWIllumination.net. Probably because I work for a small newspaper in Sandusky, I didn't do that well with my interview requests. I did get an interview with Lucy, but my requests to talk to Thiel, Gary Johnson and the governor of Oklahoma were not answered. I thank Lucy for talking to me and helping me publicize Antiwar.com.

I did watch Thiel's speech last night, and I liked this bit:

Instead of going to Mars, we have invaded the Middle East. We don’t need to see Hillary Clinton’s deleted emails: her incompetence is in plain sight. She pushed for a war in Libya, and today it’s a training ground for ISIS. On this most important issue, Donald Trump is right. It’s time to end the era of stupid wars and rebuild our country.

Whoever wins this fall, I hope her or he will "end the era of stupid wars and rebuild our country." In fact, I liked most of his speech, except for those "vote for Trump" bits. Among other things, he said he was proud to be gay and criticized culture wars nonsense, such as arguing over who can use what bathroom.

My "campaign promise" to you is that for the rest of the election, I will try to avoid writing about partisan politics. RAW's political ideas and ideas he's interested in, such as basic income, will likely be addressed, but I'll try to avoid the current campaigns.

That Guardian piece is definitely a bit troubling, specifically the women's suffrage remarks, as well as the notion that freedom and democracy are incompatible. This is the I² of Bob and Tim's SMI²LE scenario, my favorite part of it actually as it seems the most do-able at this point in time, as well as the necessary foundation for the SM and the LE. I got a feeling of elitism from that piece, although who knows for "real."

@fyreflye I see nothing in the Guardian piece that suggests the Guardian writer "got the interview" either. He rehashes a 2009 piece that Thiel wrote, but I don't see any fresh quotes. Maybe Thiel didn't give many interviews in Cleveland.

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A daily posting from Tom Jackson about my favorite writer, Robert Anton Wilson. I also seek material by or about Robert Shea, Mr. Wilson's collaborator in writing "Illuminatus!" If you have tips, you may write me at tom.jackson@gmail.com. Please put "Robert Anton Wilson" in the subject line.